The Saga of KPR: Theoretical and Experimental developments

Abstract: In this article, we present a brief narration of the origin and the overview of the recent developments done on the Kolkata Paise Restaurant (KPR) problem, which can serve as a prototype for a broader class of resource allocation problems in the presence of a large number of competing agents, typically studied using coordination and anti-coordination games. We discuss the KPR and its several extensions, as well as its applications in many economic and social phenomena. We end the article with some discussions on our ongoing experimental analysis of the same problem. We demonstrate that this provides an interesting picture of how people analyze complex situations, and design their strategies or react to them.